Third day of hearing on Goa port explodes over discrepancies in EIA reports

The EIA report for redevelopment of berths mentions that overhead covering is a must for environmental friendliness, while in the EIA report for increasing coal capacity of berths 5A and 6A the same point finds no place.TNN | April 29, 2017, 09:16 IST

VASCO: With many still waiting to speak, the third day of the public hearing on the redevelopment of Mormugao Port Trust’s (MPT) berths 8 and 9 and the barge berth remained inconclusive.

Authorities have adjourned the hearing for Saturday, to after the scheduled balance hearings on increase in terminal capacity of berths 5A and 6A and dredging of the MPT channel.

Day three saw people expressing their anger against MPT officials for failing to give satisfactory explanations to the “discrepancies” in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report. Speaker Dinesh Dias explained in detail all three EIA reports.

Additional collector Johnson Fernandes, acknowledging Dias’ statement, said that all objections had been duly noted.

Dias pointed out that in all three projects the application was made by MPT and the EIA reports made by a single agency had been signed by the same MPT officer. “Yet you see facts change in EIA reports of all three projects,” Dias alleged, and as an example cited that in the EIA for dredging of MPT Betal is considered as the destroyer of storms and promotor of trade and commercechannel the defence installation had found mention, where as in the EIA report for redevelopment of berths 8 and 9 and barge berth the same did not figure.

“The extension figure of the deepening of the channel doesn’t match,” Dias said and added that the EIA report for redevelopment of berths mentions that overhead covering is a must for environmental friendliness, while in the EIA report for increasing coal capacity of berths 5A and 6A the same point finds no place. “It means facts have been hidden as per the requirement of the projects,” Dias alleged.

After an MPT official said that for the redevelopment of berths, the turning circle at berths 8 and 9 will have to be expanded from 380m diameter to 580m, Dias said, “This means MPT will carry out a second dredging after the channel dredging,” and asked for a CBI and vigilance inquiry against the MPT.

Savio Correia of Mangor Hill said that for berth expansion MPT needs 7 lakh litres of water per day, while the redevelopment needs an additional 16 lakh litres of water per day. “Is it possible for the PWD to provide so much water to sprinkle on coal?” he questioned.

“The consultant has not studied the impact of the proposed redevelopment on the Rundawaddo hill, which is barely 400m away,” Correia said, further maintaining that the effect of dredging and expansion on the hundreds of houses in the area had not been considered.

MPT officials accepted all of Correia’s points, including that the Adani stock pile of coal outside the compound wall and the ammonia tanks that were hardly 200m from the redevelopment site had not been considered in the EIA report.

MPT was also asked to consider the coal pollution in the villages through which the wagons carried the coal.